Deja Vu All Over Again

Mark Cuban must be getting sick of this by now. The Mavs have a great team. They have a good chance to finally take it to us this game/series/year. Our squad is depleted and they are peaking. It’s gotta be their time!

And, as always, wrong. We are the stronger team at the moment, but the Mavs sure set themselves up for a win last night. They were briefly down by 10 points early in the first quarter, but they quickly dug themselves out of the hole and established a solid lead that lasted midway through the third quarter, when they were up by 13. Then, for no particular reason, the Lakers decided to show up. They had been on cruise control up until that point, staying within contact but only just. The Mavs had done to them what they had been doing to everyone else: causing deflections and wreaking havoc on defense. Instead of fighting back, the Lakers just sat there and took it.

Until the third quarter. The whole team was energized, but Kobe and Fisher in particular changed our fortunes. Kobe, who had had a mediocre shooting night up till then, went clinically insane, leaving his defender and former Laker Devean George grimacing and then outright yelling in the huddle at the next time out. He drove to the basket and freed himself for some good shots, but just as often he nailed buckets no mortal should – spinning around, fading away, hand in the face, that kinda stuff. D-Fish did his part by gifting the Lakers a 9-0 run all on his own. In all, it amounted to a 17-0 run that spanned the end of the third and beginning of the fourth quarter.

From there, it was all but over. The Lakers wasted a number of opportunities to put the game out of reach, choosing to run fast breaks and go for spectacular lob passes instead of executing the offense and running out the clock. Jason Kidd and Jason Terry chipped in some threes and runners in the lane to get it close toward the end, but it was already a done deal. The Mavs didn’t even bother fouling the last half minute of the game.

I watched the game on ridiculous high speed mode because I had familial obligations to take care of (damn holidays). For this and a variety of other reasons, I was in a despondent mood and I fully expected the Lakers to succumb to the Mavs to complete my day. When they finally got it together and started closing the gap, I went nuckin’ futs, jumping up and down, pumping my fist, cursing under my breath so as not to wake up the daughter. Eventually all I could do was laugh, because the situation was all too familiar. If we were ever in a team’s head, it was the Mavericks. If Cuban wants to recover his financial situation, he should start laying some money on us beating his team. It’s not like he has any integrity to protect.

That’s all I got on this one. No statistics, no brilliant player breakdown. Just some great highlights and a note that we play the Raptors at home Sunday night at 6:30 PT.